Thought Ripples

November 6, 2005 by Steve Pavlina

Within hours after posting A Dose of Caffeine for Your Consciousness, I went downstairs and saw that my wife was watching a movie. She was watching Mystery Men, which is about a group of inept but well-intentioned superheroes. This was a movie we’d seen when it first came out in 1999 but not since then — it just happened to be showing on cable (USA channel). As I walked into the room, the scene that just happened to be on the screen was the one where Invisible Boy finally gets to show off his power — the power to become invisible, but only when no one is looking directly at him. He uses it to bypass a deadly machine. That’s a fascinating interpretation of one of the concepts I just wrote about.

The movie that came on right after that one on the same channel was The Hulk, which is about a powerful superhero who comes to possess great powers which he’s unable to control. Hmmm… A warning message?

Then later in the day I stumbled upon an article about an 8-year old Korean physics prodigy who’s entering university and says he wants to invent anti-gravity cars that can fly — another example of something I was just writing about this morning.

Then I happened to be watching The Matrix Reloaded during lunch (must be movie day here), and a scene came on where Neo and another character in Zion were discussing how little they slept… just a few hours a day. Alrighty then…

I interpret these kinds of things as bounceback reflections of my thoughts rippling through external reality. At first I would dismiss such events as my brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) at work, which can predispose us to notice what we’ve been thinking about. For example, you buy a new car and then see that same make and model everywhere on the road. But I became curious to see if I could push beyond the RAS explanation and start manifesting coincidences that would be really hard to explain merely as the result of subconscious programming. Letting go of that limiting belief seemed to have a big effect, and now I notice strange synchronicities happening almost every day, many of which require a serious stretch for me to explain purely as a result of subconscious action or random coincidence.

Then I started trying to consciously create such synchronous experiences by intending for them to manifest with greater abundance and intensity. Now I experience this kind of thing nearly every day, and sometimes there’s an avalanche of them within a compressed period of time (like 30-60 minutes). The coincidences described above are among the mildest.

Since I started this blog last year, these effects have been magnified tremendously. I think that may be due to the fact that via my writing, I’m able to influence the thinking of thousands of others. I suspect that when thousands of people think a certain thought within a short period of time (like 24 hours or so), it creates stronger ripples through reality than when just one person thinks the thought. So that may explain why when I write about something, I see a greater surge in synchronicities, even if I discount those that seem to be a direct result of people reading the blog and sending me feedback.

If this is indeed how reality works, then it means I need to be very cognizant of the thoughts I’m putting out into the world. I’m OK with accepting that responsibility because I’ve been consciously committing myself to serve the highest good of all and to develop a deeper understanding of what that means. The ability to influence the thoughts of thousands of people each day isn’t something I take lightly. I feel grateful for the privilege, and I’m dedicated to doing the best I can. Such a privilege can easily be abused though if one succumbs to fear-based thinking, as Adolf Hitler once did with his communication skills.

I think everyone has this innate ability to use their thoughts to create ripples in external reality, but they don’t normally notice it because they mostly use their thoughts to recreate their past in the future. Most people think the same thoughts they did yesterday, so their experience of reality appears more rigid and less flexible. I will tell you that it’s been a major challenge for me to learn how to think consciously and proactively instead of merely reacting to external reality, to choose my thoughts instead of having them dictated by my environment. It took years to be able to do that with any consistency. Reactionary thinking is a hard habit to break.

This is The Greatest American Hero territory, where we seem to possess some sort of curious power but lack the instruction manual. I’m deeply fascinated by the opportunity to explore such territory. I hope you find it equally fascinating as you continue to grow more conscious and aware.